Thursday, January 8, 2009

Adding to the Pantheon

It took me 26 years to be cool enough to have a real boyfriend. I passed the time between birth and that point engaging in cultural and intellectual pursuits. It was the next best thing. By the time I got to graduate school I had formed my own Pantheon: a group of people living and dead that I considered godly. It contained such characters as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and J.S. Bach. They were people who had such talent, and had mastered their genres so well, that the results they produced were almost spiritual.

Today I add one more member to my Pantheon: Pepcid AC. Yes, that's it: the heartburn medicine.

In the last three days it has changed my life immeasurably. All the entries that you haven't been seeing on my blog in the last months -- because I haven't written them -- have been about the physical pain and discomfort of pregnancy. You can't say that I didn't ask for it, beg for it. So I have mixed feelings about dwelling on my absolute state of disability.

But the heartburn was going to kill me. I knew it. The doctor said it would put hair on my babies' chests. Just what we wanted for our girls. I went through 100-count bottles of TUMS and Rolaids (which only spelled T-E-M-P-O-R-A-R-Y-R-E-L-I-E-F) like Halloween candy. But every single time I hiccupped, rolled over in bed, sat up, sat down, walked any where, said anything, or God forbid ate anything, it would light the fire in my chest and throat. Last week I even used my Lamaze breathing methods to "breathe through the pain" of it.

And then my doctor said I could use Pepcid AC too. Once a day, over the counter. I selected the E Z Chews.

Immediately the sun began to shine. The birdies chirped. I felt like skipping through the clear winter air. I felt like like rolling over in bed, hiccupping, eating spicy and acidic foods... Baroque harmonies swirled around Colombian magic realism in my brain.

The day of my liberation was Tuesday. Today is Friday*. I'm a new woman.